Bearbetat material från arabvärlden

It is assumed that the values underlying the upsurge in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria are those of Western democracy—a desire for liberation, freedom, equality. And it is also assumed that this represents the will of the mass of Egyptians, urban and rural.

But this may well be an optical illusion. Many of history’s major successful revolutions were driven by the desire for material betterment, for very concrete bread, not by a desire for such abstracts as political freedom and human rights. Egypt’s is probably no different.

Han skriver också om hur journalisterna väljer att rapportera:

And the Western interviewers, especially from the BBC and CNN, are in effect hearing and then broadcasting representatives of a thin layer of Egyptians, who know decent English (who have lived in the West or are children of mixed Egyptian-Anglo-Saxon parentage or were educated at the American University of Cairo). They are relatively sophisticated and generally secular (or seemingly secular). Wael Ghanem, of Google, is a good example.

Western journalists interview them because they, the journalists, don’t know Arabic or because the journalists prefer interviews in English that can be readily transmitted and are understood by their networks’ viewers. But these interviewees are unrepresentative of the vast mass of Egyptians, urban and rural (mostly poor, mostly without English).

The result of this unrepresentative interviewing is that the consumers of the Western media, in London, Washington and the capitals of Europe, are getting a skewed (indeed, perhaps thoroughly misleading) view of what Egyptians think and want. Occasionally, the viewer will hear, from somewhere off center stage, “Death to Israel” or “Allahu Akbar.” But these voices are drowned out by the mellifluous English speakers, chanting “freedom,” “human rights,” “democracy,” into receptive Western ears. The sophisticated, not to say manipulative, interviewees know that this is what BBC and CNN viewers in the West want to hear.